Theses of Campione d’Italia

Introduction. In 2005 the participants of the International Workshop on Mathematics and Democracy held in Erice agreed on a
common set of principles that a fair electoral system should satisfy, known by the scholars as Erice Decalogue.

The School in Campione. From 9 to 15 September 2012, the Summer School on Game Theory and Models of Voting took place in Campione d’Italia (CO). The speakers, experts from Mathematics, Economics, Political Sciences and Laws, want to confirm and integrate the EriceDecalogue-en with the following:

Theses of Campione

the results from Theory of Complex Systems, Game Theory and Political Sciences show that no electoral system satisfies all reasonable criteria of performance,

the system should encourage parties to present programs or electoral manifestos that are distinguishable for the voters,

the influence of the parties over legislation ought to reflect their electoral support,

the voting system should be transparent and understandable to the voters,

the system should encourage the voters to vote,

the system should be difficult to manipulate.

The meaning of point 1 is that the choice has to be made among imperfect systems, emphasizing the features that in a particular situation are more relevant, e.g. representativeness, non-exclusion of minority groups, or others. Point 2 already appears in the Italian rules. According to point 3 the Parliament and the electoral body should make the same choice, at least about the most important issues. Point 4 suggests to avoid rules that even if are reasonable may result too complex for a significant part of the voters. Relatively to points 5 and 6, it is possible to refer to a referendum for abrogating a law, when the groups that want to maintain the law sometimes invite their supporters to abstention, aiming at making the referendum not valid, because the quorum was not reached.